


Caged

by SouthSideStory



Series: The Road from Home [3]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games (Movies)
Genre: Drug Use, F/M, Forced Sex Work, Loss of Virginity, Very Bad Decision Making
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-11
Updated: 2020-10-11
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:00:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26956216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SouthSideStory/pseuds/SouthSideStory
Summary: Annie’s Victory Tour brings her to the Capitol, with Finnick at her side. He did his job as her mentor when he got her out of the arena, but he can’t look after her anymore. All he can do is play the part Snow has given him. It’s almost simple now, posing for the cameras and obeying his patrons, all with a smile on his face. Pretending is so easy that he can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore. But Annie might be able to remind him.
Relationships: Annie Cresta/Finnick Odair
Series: The Road from Home [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/365018
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Caged

**Author's Note:**

> According to Google Docs, I wrote the first draft of this in March 2013. It’s been sitting on my drive gathering dust for years. It was supposed to be a later chapter in my Odesta WIP Beautiful Things, but I think it stands pretty well on its own.
> 
> All you need to know for this to make sense is that Annie’s district partner--the one from canon who died in front of her--was her best friend, and he was in love with her. They went into the arena with complementary sea glass tokens, and now Annie usually wears them together on a necklace. 
> 
> Please forgive the ultraviolet prose. I’ve edited it a bit, but it’s still incredibly flowery, as most of my writing was in 2013. 
> 
> I didn’t tag this as Finnick/OC even though there’s a sex scene between him and the original character, because it’s non-consensual and I don’t want to give the impression that there’s romance with anyone besides Annie.
> 
> Mind the warnings. They’re there for a reason.

.

.

With his lips closed, Dionysus looks plain by Capitol standards. Pasty skin, undyed and free of tattoos. Short brown hair, black shoes, dark suit. Colorless, except for the trio of yellow tablets in his palm. My throat itches to swallow down the promise they hold, but I have two questions that need answering.

First: “Will I be able to fuck?”

The dealer laughs, revealing a mouth full of gold and gems. “Like a damn rabbit,” Dionysus says.

Second: “I want to feel nothing, but a good nothing. Can this do that?”

Sapphires flash on his eye teeth. “You’ll see nirvana,” he promises.

I don’t know what that is, or where it might be, but any place would be better than this one.

.

.

Red. That’s all I see, at first. Waves and folds of the color spilling down the length of Annie’s skirt. Six feet of fabric fans out behind her, but the top of the dress is spare, sheer wisps that cling to her breasts and shoulders and throat.

“Inspired,” says Sabina. “Her stylist has an eye for drama.”

Her stylist will be lucky to have eyes at all when I’m done with him.

I take a flute of turquoise champagne from a passing Avox’s tray. It tastes like turpentine and sugar, the medicine that District Four mothers force down their children’s sore throats. I drink three glasses in ten minutes. Red still bleeds along the edges of my vision, and no matter where I turn, there’s Annie. Trussed up for Capitol appetites, tribute all over again. When I reach for another glass Sabina touches her too-long nails to my wrist. Tap, tap: bad dog. She kisses me, tongue sour blue slick, and I imagine what a senator’s wife might look like if three weeping mouths opened in the middle of her chest.

Something tugs at my shirt sleeve, jealous but gentle. Annie, drowning in all that District One silk.

“I need you,” she says. Splattered droplets dot her left cheek, a constellation of freckles that shine crimson-wet in the low light.

“Everyone needs me tonight.”

Sabina laughs and Annie pulls away, so I know I've said the wrong thing. That’s what happens when I put pills in my mouth; nothing but mistakes come out.

I say, “Teenage girls,” and give my date a knowing smile. Let her read what she wants into that.

Sabina twines her fingers around my arm and leans in close, smug and conspiratorial. “My daughter’s at that age now. It’s all _me, me, me_! And they want everything immediately. Nothing pleases them…”

How this is any different from the rest of the Capitol I can’t guess, but I let her go on, nodding and humming my sympathy where appropriate. Oh yes, they’re selfish little brats. Ungrateful, never satisfied. When Sabina pauses to sample a canapé I say how much I hate to leave her for even a moment, but I am Annie’s mentor. Duty calls and all that.

Sabina frowns prettily. “I hope you're this dedicated in all of your pursuits.”

She should know the answer to that already. This isn’t our first date. Still, I feed her a stock innuendo about finishing the things I start.

“Go on then, but be back soon!”

I find my tribute talking to the light crew. A woman with tattooed vines climbing the side of her shaved head shows Annie how to hold a sheet of foil. It’s a clever way to hide from the cameras and I wish I’d thought of it first. Too late for that, because Annie turns her silver shield, and then there’s a lens blinking closer to my well-lit face.

“Perfect,” says Vines. “You’re a natural.”

Annie shakes her head. “No. He’s just an easy target.”

I duck into the bright circle of the light crew’s equipment before the cameras can focus. The heat feels artificial, claustrophobic, like the solar beds my stylist makes me visit. Annie returns the foil to Vines and thanks her for the lesson. I can’t breathe again until there’s ten feet between me and the clicking insect sound of mechanical eyes.

“I thought you were busy,” Annie says. Her voice is so light and casual that, if I didn’t know her, I’d have no idea that she’s annoyed.

“I shouldn't have said that. I didn’t mean it.”

Annie shrugs. “You never mean anything you say in the Capitol.”

Sometimes I forget how much she sees, this girl who’s turned my world upside down in six months. “Where are your tokens?”

Annie grasps at the place over her heart where two sea glass pendants always rest. She looks mildly surprised to catch only empty air between her fingers. “Vibius wouldn’t let me wear them. Said the colors...” She shakes her head, the way you would to get water out of your ears after swimming. “I’m hungry.”

But when I follow her to a banquet table she doesn’t eat a bite. Instead, she stacks gingerbread cubes around a pink chocolate fountain.

“Who’s your date?” she asks.

“Senator Wexler’s wife,” I say.

Annie never looks up, too busy skewering blueberries on toothpicks. She sticks them in the topmost layer of her curtain wall, like heads on neighboring spikes. Two by two by two. Then she says, “Doesn’t the senator mind?”

“Only that he couldn’t come with us.”

Annie tips over the fountain, and chocolate bursts through her gingerbread dam. It creeps along the aisle of white cloth and drips onto the floor. Part of me wants to scold her, because some Avox will have to clean all this up after the party. I don’t, though, because I know how everything shifts after the Games. You might leave the arena, but it comes with you all the same. Alliances replace friendships. Sleep never really comes easy again, because too many things are still awake in the dark. Survival is tangled up with fighting, hurting, killing, and sometimes you need small destructions just to breathe.

“Dance with me,” Annie says.

The train on that fucking dress is longer than she is. “How could I, with you in that?”

I laugh. Everything and nothing seems funny at the same time. Annie jumps a little when I finger one of the slivers of silk covering her chest. Vibius didn’t leave much to the imagination, so I can see the shape of her. Small teardrop breasts, narrow shoulders, long waist. Her nipples peak beneath the fabric.

Somewhere in my periphery a camera flashes.

“Stop,” Annie says, and I want to shake her. That word doesn’t mean anything in this city. A victor should understand the rules by now.

I trace her collarbone. We’re too far away for Sabina to see us, but even if she does it won’t matter. This is what they want me to be.

The preps painted Annie’s lips too, and it makes her look like a working girl. Ripe apple mouth ready to be plucked. If I could I’d spit on a napkin and wipe it all away, same as my mother used to do to get dirt off my face.

She leans into my touch and asks, “Why are you with that woman?”

“Because she can afford my company.”

Annie’s red, red mouth frowns, but I simply smile and step away, tell her to eat something and enjoy the party.

Sabina welcomes me with a soft hello peck to my cheek. I turn it into more, the kind of wet, deep kiss that decent folk back home wouldn’t dream of doing in public. But that’s how I like it, even if I can hear the cameras snapping behind and beside and in front of me. Pretending is so easy that I can’t tell what’s real and what’s not anymore.

.

.

These sounds are almost lost beneath the snap of handcuffs closing: footsteps, a full skirt whispering across the floor, the creak of hinges.

The manacles lock around my wrists, pulling my arms taut, stretching until my shoulders lift from the bed and I can feel the blades angling outward. _Like clipped wings opening_ , Sabina said, the first time she bought me. _A caged bird poised to take flight._ Now she leans forward and bites my neck, just hard enough to mark. It’s always hard enough to mark with Sabina, whether she uses teeth or nails or the back of her hand.

I hear feather-light fabric brushing the carpet, then see something in the gap between door and frame. The briefest flash of red silk. There, then gone.

Sabina strikes me hard on the cheek. Pain vibrates through my jaw and up the side of my face. Stars burst behind my eyes, then in front of them, but I don’t feel distant or dizzy. Everything becomes sharper, brighter. Needles made of sunlight prick my vision, highlighting it all with stinging intensity. If I ever come down I’m going to kill Dionysus for selling me those three little pills the color of daffodils. He promised oblivion but gave me this instead. With every blow the room grows brighter, until all I see is Sabina, haloed in white.

Her mouth closes over me, warm and soft, drawing out all the things I don’t want to give. Then she’s straddling my lap, hands clutching my shoulders, nails digging into my skin. Ten welts spring beneath her touch, bright as pink ribbons down my chest. It’s winter everywhere but between her legs, and there she’s fever hot. Cold snakes down my throat, chokes and burrows inside me until it’s snowing under my skin.

“Finnick,” she hisses. I grip the bedposts and snap my hips up to meet her. I’m shaking from the chill air, the pleasure where a warm body takes mine in and the pain everywhere else. I don’t stop, not until she arches and trembles, mouth open on a whiny cry.

One beat, two, and she climbs off. Leaves me aching, tied up, and filthy while she saunters to the bathroom to refresh herself.

The haze clears, unfreezes, and I remember where I’ve seen red silk tonight.

.

.

I scrub until the scratch marks on my chest reopen and the water blushes down the drain, washing away smudged makeup and sweat, fresh blood and Sabina’s come. Not mine, and even though I’m half-hard, I’m mostly thankful. Dates are always worse when a client makes me finish. Steam fills the shower stall, wet and suffocating. Flash-bulbs go off behind my closed eyelids and all I can hear is the endless snapping of camera shutters. I sit on the tile floor, head between my knees, until the water grows cold.

After I get out of the shower and dry off, I pull on the tight blue pants from my date with Sabina and go to Annie’s room. I don’t knock, and when I step inside she jumps. Her dress is curled up in the corner, wilting. All those red folds remind me of a rose, so I turn away. Free of make-up, Annie’s face shines brown and clean. Dark waves fall limply around her cheeks, weighted and damp. By the way she holds the robe over her breasts I can tell she’s not wearing much underneath.

Good. I hope she feels naked. Exposed and vulnerable, like I do.

“You watched us.”

Annie sits on the edge of the bed, legs drawn up close to her body. She whispers an apology I can’t stand to hear.

“Don’t,” I say. She flinches and grasps the sea glass tokens around her neck. Her eyes dart away, focusing on some point along the baseboard.

“Look at me.” I kneel on the floor before her, too close to be ignored. “You didn’t have any trouble looking before.”

The only small mercy I can find is that Annie left before Sabina actually fucked me. But she saw me handcuffed to the bed, and that’s bad enough.

Annie bites her bottom lip, and for a moment all I can see is this same skittish girl, more innocent and less broken, on a different train, blushing under my hands.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “When I saw you leaving with that woman—I didn’t really think, I just wanted to know what was so special about her. So I followed you.”

I thought she wanted to see _me_ , and I don’t know why I’m so disappointed. It’s a good thing that she didn’t want a peep show, that she ran off before she saw the main event. A good thing—but it still pisses me off.

I wrap my hands around her calves and slide down, thumbs grazing the soft skin of her inner ankles.

“Finnick?” Her lips linger on the sound, not quite closing over the question she’s made of my name.

“Open your legs,” I tell her. Because whatever she’s asking, this is the only answer I have to give.

Annie’s breath hitches. She trembles all the way down to her toes, but she’s warm, my girl. I brought her home and that makes Annie _mine_. She belongs to me in the same way I belong to my sponsors.

When she doesn’t move, I kiss the inside of her right knee, flicking my tongue over a new scar there—a pretty pink thing that’s cropped up since her Games—until her legs shake and unlock. Just as she falls open and willing below the waist, Annie clutches the collar of her robe even more tightly, keeping it closed to me.

Eighteen isn’t so young, I remind myself. Not here, not in this place.

“Don’t stop,” she whispers, and that’s all I need.

Beads of moisture cling to the dark curls between her legs. She smells like the Capitol, flowers and spun sugar, but when I put my mouth there all I taste is salt and wet and girl. Her hands scramble for purchase, first on the covers, then in my hair, and she pulls with more strength than I expected. Not as sharply as Sabina, but enough to smart. That’s been done to me so many times that I know it means _more_ and _now_ and _harder_ —though by the way Annie’s thumb brushes over my cheek, I think it might also mean _please_.

No, eighteen isn’t too young for this, but I might be.

I can feel her looking: eyes on me, on my body, on the things I’m doing. Just like before, when she peeked into that bedroom and watched Sabina getting her money’s worth, and it stirs something ugly and angry in the pit of my stomach. So I pull away, let my mouth part from her with a goodbye kiss cruel enough to make her whine and tug on my hair, to say my name again. No question this time, just a soft plea.

I’m sick of being on my knees, and really, there’s no reason I can’t do what I want. No reason at all. When I stand, Annie’s eyes go to my chest, flickering across the stripes Sabina’s fingernails left behind. I strip off my pants, and her gaze lowers, lingers.

Beneath the robe I find her pliant and panting. Skin damp, nipples hard, breath coming fast and shallow. Greedy, grasping, her touch falls with selfish hunger, and in this Annie isn’t unlike my other lovers. Long legs wrap around my waist, anchoring me to her. She’s warm and wet, whimpering in a way that might sound pitiful if it wasn’t making me so hard. I press against her, teasing. Those little mewling noises grow stronger, tighten together into a full-throated moan.

“Have you ever done this before?” I ask.

Annie shakes her head, then says, “Almost, once, but…”

Her eyes go distant, and she’s about to slip away from me. Retreat to some inner place where her district partner still lives and loves, but I’m not going to let her mind wander, not now when our bodies are tangled up together. I kiss her, our first, and that’s so backwards that I almost laugh.

Beneath my mouth Annie takes a deep, gasping breath. Then she peppers kisses everywhere she can reach. My brow, both cheeks, the tip of my nose. My lips, again and again. The curve from shoulder to neck and the hollow between my collarbones. When her quick tongue darts out to trace the shell of my ear, I shudder. The drugs must have finally worn off, because I feel myself warming for the first time tonight. “Finnick,” she whispers. “I love you—”

I can’t stand to hear that, not from Annie. So I kiss her quiet, slip a hand between her thighs, and slide two fingers inside of her.

“You’re wetter than home,” I say, and it’s true. More so when I curl my fingers, beckoning her forward—closer to me, closer to coming. “Were you like this in the ballroom, when I touched you?”

“Yes?” It comes out a question, eager but unsure. Annie’s not fluent in pillow talk, and something about that sends a jolt through me. All at once I want her, need to fuck her like I’ll die if I don’t. Under me she’s subtle curves and rocking warmth. Open legs, cradling my hips as I push inside—and then I _feel_ her. Tight, slick heat, stretched around my cock, gripping me, pulling me in.

Annie whimpers, but whether that sound is pained or pleased I’m not sure, can’t tell and barely care. “Yes,” she says, even though I never asked. Why didn’t I ask?

In the beginning I go gentle and steady. Then I slow our rhythm, stretch out the slide of skin on skin, and tell her to beg. _Love me_ becomes _have me, you can have me_ becomes _fuck me._

For a moment all I can feel are handcuffs snapping closed, grabbing fingers and greedy cunt. I’m angry all over again but still aching, and Annie knows, because her hands untangle from my hair and dart down to cover her ears. But I catch her wrists, drag them over her head and let my weight do the rest.

I spread her arms apart, wide as they’ll go. Pinned, she’s a butterfly behind glass, pretty and splayed. Annie must like being caged better than I do, because soon she shivers beneath me, coming and crying at once. Back arched, small breasts thrust forward, toes curled and legs taut; she’s lovely like this and so tight it almost hurts.

On the low tide of our touch she says those three unwanted words, passes them from her mouth to mine like a hard candy secret.

“Don’t,” I say.

The camera loves me too. I’m sick to death of love.

But then my climax creeps up on me, sharp and sweet, and I can’t think anymore. There’s nothing but Annie beneath me, her body tight and wet around mine.

In the soft moment right after, I feel something new. A warmth, quiet and gentle, as Annie looks up at me with heavy-lidded green eyes. That love she promised is raw and open as a wound.

It’s terrifying. And tempting, which is the scariest part of all.

The knot around her throat unties easily, and I take a green sea glass token with me when I go. It’s all she has left of the boy who loved her, who died at her side. Stealing it is cruel, but I don’t do it out of spite or jealousy. The reason is simple: my patrons always pay, and Annie is no exception.

**Author's Note:**

> Please let me know what you thought of this with a comment! :)


End file.
